Big Kidney
Journey
Michael's Big Kidney Journey
After the diagnosis comes the life. The machines. The schedule that owns three days of every week. The identity questions nobody prepares you for. This is the book about what happens next — written from the chair.
Because nobody wrote the book I needed after my diagnosis
When I started dialysis, I could find plenty of clinical information. What I could not find was an honest account of what the life actually looks like. Not the medical facts — I had a nephrologist for that. The human part. What do you do with your identity when a machine is keeping you alive? How do you travel? How do you work? How do you stay present for the people who need you when a third of your week is spent in a treatment chair?
This book is the answer I built for myself — tested against real experience, not borrowed from a pamphlet. I was building a business, planning trips, and raising a son through all of it. Every chapter in this book came from a real problem I had to solve on dialysis.
If you are newly diagnosed, this will help you plan. If you have been on dialysis for years, you will recognize yourself in these pages. Either way, you are not alone in this.
Topics covered in this book
The reader I wrote this for
A passage from the opening chapter
The nurses are kind. That is the first thing you notice. They know your name, your schedule, your fistula arm. They know what chair you like and how you take your coffee if you are allowed coffee at all that day. In a strange way, they become your most consistent relationship.
You sit in that chair for four hours and you have two choices: become a patient, or remain a person who happens to need treatment. I chose the second one. It took practice.
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Available now on Amazon in Kindle ($5.99) and paperback ($9.99). A book written from the dialysis chair, for the people sitting in one.
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